Should You Offload Messaging Management?

Managing messaging is a science for most operations, provided they have the
expertise on hand. When is it a good time to save yourself some hassle and hand your organization's
mail and messaging over to an outsourcer?

Administering e-mail and other messaging functions can eat up a lot of
management resources. As a result, some organizations are now turning
instead to service providers, under either traditional outsourcing,
hosted management, or remote management scenarios. Aside from cost
savings, providers claim to provide guaranteed service levels, as well
as expert help with problematic platforms, viruses and spam. Some
administrators, though, still oppose working with providers, often
citing privacy and security concerns.

Kansas Farm Bureau Services (KFBS) is one example of a relatively early
adopter. The bureau hired US Internetworking (USi) for Exchange 2000
migration services and messaging management. Amy Grothaus, KFBS's Web
manager, cites four main reasons for the decision: recruitment issues; a
requirement for "24/7 availability in a non 24x7 shop"; system uptime;
and "a need to focus current staff on other key enterprise initiatives."

In fact, some analysts are predicting a boom in messaging services over
the next few years. "Outsourcing can significantly reduce the cost of
ownership of a messaging system," maintains Michael Osterman, principal
of Osterman Research. Other reasons for teaming with a provider include
more predictable costs; guaranteed service levels; better contingency
planning; and "a single point of contract for resolving messaging system
failures and other issues," according to Osterman.

"Not having to manage the messaging system on a day-to-day basis means
that IT can take a more strategic view of key issues," the analyst adds.

"If e-mail outsourcing makes economic sense for your company -- and you
want to free your people up from a lot of busywork -- then by all means
go ahead," recommends Jon William Toigo, an independent industry analyst
specializing in storage and network management.

Still, though, some network managers aren't exactly enthusiastic about
managed messaging. "You really need to do a cost-benefit analysis to
determine whether outsourcing is right for your company," suggests
Zachary A. Slavin of The Slavin Group, a systems and services provider
in New York City .The cost-benefit analysis should take into account the
cost of hardware, software, and licensing, along with the entire cost of
administration.

"You need to look at the cost of salary and benefits for the e-mail
administrator, as well as the cost of having a supervisor on call when
the administrator is out sick, for instance," Slavin adds.

In traditional outsourcing, the outsourcer comes into your company, and
managed outsourced functions on-site. Although managed hosting typically
costs less than traditional outsourcing, it offers less customization,
too, observes Tom Kucharvy, an analyst at Summit Strategies..

Beyond costs, a number of other factors can tip the scales in one
direction or the other. Companies can get be more likely to gain from
either managed hosting or traditional outsourcing if they're having
trouble attracting and retaining good technical staff, or if they're
seeking very specialized skills.

Factors that tend to drive decision-makers away from outsourcing include
security concerns and a lack of confidence in outside providers,
particularly if the customer has already been burnt in the past.

"If you have confidential matter residing on a server, it's essential to
keep the data from prying eyes," according to Slavin.

Kucharvy also points to a number of temporary factors that could be
holding up some deployments. These include a battered image of hosting
providers; shaky financial positions of some of the players; lack of
sunsetting announcements by some vendors, "and therefore, a lack of
urgency in upgrading;" slow emergence of remote management tools; and
many customers' "underestimates" of the costs of running their own
messaging systems.

Some vendors, including Critical Path and Syntegra, are now providing
their messaging solutions in a choice of two ways: as a product only, or
as part of a managed service.

Complexity?
Actually, big enterprises are being quicker to apply traditional
outsourcing to the messaging picture than mid-sized corporations,
according to Kucharvy.

"The largest corporations have been leading the move to full
outsourcing, to get the service levels they need at lower costs, as
well as to free up their people from really trivial administrative
tasks," says the Summit analyst.

Some companies that are still hanging back "are not comparing apples to
apples - they're only counting the cost of the server and the cost of
the license, for instance," Kucharvy adds/

For their part, vendors have been carving the messaging outsourcing
market into a variety of niches. Syntegra, for instance, sells into both
the corporate and service provider markets.

"Most of our corporate customers are very large. If they're not large,
their networks have some level of complexity. The typical profile for
mid- sized customers is that they've been growing through mergers or
acquisitions, and that they now find themselves with a bunch of people
who need to be integrated into the corporate networking system," says
Judd Frahm, Syntegra's VP of managed services.

Meanwhile, though, some SMBs say that hosted messaging offers just the
sort of turnkey solution they want. Grothaus says she was generally
satisfied with the USi-assisted Exchange 2000 migration, although it
involved some issues around connectivity, as well as the need for user
interaction to update profiles.

At this point, KFBS is handling new account setup, but relying on USi
for other aspects of messaging management, according to Grothaus.

Meanwhile, Mi8 recently added the International Amateur Athlete
Federation (IAAF) to its roster. Without the use of hosted management,
the organization might have needed to install a messaging server at each
of its 400 offices worldwide, maintains Mi8 CEO Dave Castellani.

Mi8 is moving more adding more remote messaging management to its hosted
management offering, according to Castellani. Meanwhile, in a
non-exclusive deal, traditional outsourcer EDS is now reselling Mi8's
services.

Manhattan, Kansas or New York City?
"Being in Manhattan, Kansas, we're two hours away from a major city -
which is Kansas City - and it was hard at the time, with the dot coms,
to recruit technical talent to this area. So we knew we couldn't manage
(Exchange 2000) inhouse," according to the KFBS's Grothaus.

"You might want to outsource if you're unable to recruit and retain
competent IT staff, whether because you're small, or because you're in
an undesirable geographical location," echoes Slavin.

"If you're a small company, it can be more cost effective to outsource,
whether you're located in Kansas or in New York City or San Francisco,"
agrees Philip Pridmore-Brown, product line manager, enterprise
messaging, at Critical Path.

Running in the background?
Advocates argue that outsourcers can manage messaging more efficiently
due to economies of scale. Moreover, messaging is seen as especially
suitable for outsourcing, since it usually isn't integral to the
customer's core business.

"Messaging is strategic, but it's kind of been conquered and solved. It
just needs to be running in the background, without problems. If I'm a
chemical company, I'm in the business of creating chemicals, not
providing networking services. If I'm the CIO, maybe I want the internal
staff to be more focused on security, or on managing business
applications," Frahm illustrates.

On the other hand, managing e-mail in multi platform environments can be
a tough nut to crack.

"I have an environment using a Novell (NetWare) 4.11 server and
GroupWise 5.2. Everything is functional. (However), the ultimate
decision maker in the office is unhappy with Novell, but loves
GroupWise. I have a new server to play with and see if it will be
capable of replacing the Novell server. The problem is that it is a
Windows 2000 server," writes one administrator, in an Internet
newsgroup.

"When I put the checkmark in "workstation only"on the Novell client so
that the Win2K server is NOT connecting to the Novell server, Console
One can't see anything! No NDS objects, and especially no GroupWise
objects. So in that mode I can't adminster anything
NetWare/GroupWise-related. Yet GroupWise functions and I can get into
mailboxes. I need to be able to log into just the Win2K server and
administer the stuff and GroupWise, without logging into a Novell server
as a client."

From Windows 2000 to DecNET
Many outsourcers and managed hosting firms specialize in specific
platform niches. These can run the gamut from emerging e-mail platforms
like Exchange 2000, to mainstream environments such as Exchange 5.5,
Lotus Notes and GroupWise; to legacy systems like DecNET and IBM's old
PROFS.

"If you're running a legacy system on a mainframe, you might want to
outsource management to someone who specializes in that area.
Alternatively, you might want to bring in a hosted provider to give you
one of the newer solutions," Slavin suggests.

In any case, it's a good idea to find someone with demonstrated
experience in managing the platform you choose, whatever it may be.
Grothaus found that out the hard way. Before working with USI on
Exchange 2000 migration, KFBS hired another outsourcer for Exchange 5.5
migration and management. "We encountered multiple issues of an unstable
environment during two-week migration," she recalls. The previous
outsourcer also failed to implement the password policy KFBS had
requested, in several attempts.

"Each messaging system - whether it's Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes,
or whatever - has its own unique issues," Slavin concurs. Interliant is
one example of an outsourcer that runs a Notes practice.

Some outsourcers prefer to use their own proprietary messaging servers,
though. "Exchange wasn't designed to scale at the level of the
Internet," according to Pridmore-Brown. Critical Path's messaging server
runs on Solaris, Linux for S/390, and AIX, as well as on NT.

Syntegra offers customers a choice of either the Syntegra messaging
server or Microsoft Exchange. The Syntegra messaging platform operates
on Linux, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, and Tru64.

Syntegra will also manage Lotus Notes, Novell GroupWise, and even the
old DEC All-in-One, "but this is more a matter of creating gateways to
mainstream Exchange or Syntegra," says Frahm.

Other players converging on the messaging space range from outsourcing
giants like IBM, CSC, Hewlett-Packard/Compaq and the "big 5"; to telecom
carriers such as Sprint and BT; to smaller specialists such as United
Messaging, for instance.

Out with spam, in with IM?
Syntegra also specializes in anti-spam, anti-virus, instant messaging,
and wireless messaging management, according to Frahm. On the anti-spam
side, Syntegra is partnering with Brightmail.

Just about every outsourcer in existence, though, is now claiming to pay
special attention to spam and viruses. "We're very focused on
eliminating spam and viruses before they ever hit. If customers don't
have this, the repercussions to their business can be enormous,"
maintains Pridmore-Brown.

According to a survey conducted by Brightmail, the total volume of spam
skyrocketed by 46% between November, 2001 and January, 2002. Over the
same period, though, the total volume of e-mail rose just 14 percent.

"You're already beginning to see more of a tilt toward instant messaging
(IM), and away from e-mail, on a regular basis. You might see that going
forward this will accelerate, particularly with the continuing growth of
spam," predicts David Strassel, an analyst for the Intermarket Group.

Others, though, think that spam and viruses can be easily dealt with
inhouse, assuming a company has the resources. "There are hardware and
software products readily available for both problems, depending on what
you want to do. You can insert antivirus and antispam controls in your
firewall, for instance," Slavin says.

Regulations a driver, too
In the current regulatory climate, companies in fields like finance and
health care are having a hard time figuring out which e-mails need to be
archived, and for how long, Toigo notes.

NAC requirements, for example, dictate that messages dealing with
broker- dealer solicitation need to be archived for seven years, sources
say.

"I think this is a driver for outsourcing, too. Different clients have
different interpretations. We get quite involved with customers' legal
people," according to Frahm.

Loss of control?
Despite these advantages some organizations are seeing, others continue
to resist managed messaging.

"In some instances, the loss of control can be frustrating for clients.
So we try to stay in line with them, rather than being just an extension
on the other side of a wall," Frahm acknowledges.

While conceding that other factors can be barriers, vendors tend to
argue that security and privacy shouldn't be one of them. For one thing,
organizations can encrypt their e-mail, according to Mi8's Castellani.

Moreover, organizations outsource other functions, without worrying that
the outsourcer will commit abuse. "Most companies outsource their
payroll, for instance. And actually, e-mail is far more interesting for
people that work inside a company, anyway," Castellani contends.

Organizations should, however, check out the viability of the
outsourcing firm, and to make sure the SLAs being offered are realistic.

"Companies should look for an outsourcer that has financial wherewithal,
and for one that is also willing and able to live up to its SLAs,"
cautions Frahm.

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